Couchman, Elizabeth (1876–1982)

Australian politician. Name variations: Dame Elizabeth Couchman. Born on April 19, 1876, at Geelong, Australia; died on November 18, 1982; daughter of Elizabeth Mary (Ramsay) Tannock and Archibald Tannock (a confectioner); attended Girls' High School, Geelong, and University of Western Australia (B.A., 1916); married Claude Couchman (a businessman), 1917 (died, 1927); no children.

Elizabeth Couchman, an influential politician at a time when political opportunities for women were circumscribed, helped provide a political base for women in Australia. Born in 1876 to Scottish immigrants, she would later remember the political discussions between her mother and grandmother as being her earliest recollections. After matriculating from Girls' High School, Geelong, in 1895, she was a teacher at Methodist Ladies' College and at Tintern. Couchman headed to Perth for the free education available from the University of Western Australia, where she studied political science and maintained interests in constitutional law and economics. In the year following her B.A. in 1916, she married Claude Couchman in Melbourne. Widowed in 1927, she participated fully in public life as a justice of the peace, through volunteer work, and by way of the Australian Women's National League. Formed in 1904, the League was established to support loyalty to the throne and empire, battle socialism, educate women in the political arena, and protect the interests of women and children. The largest continuing non-Labor political organization, it provided the launching pad for Couchman's career.

Known for her political astuteness, insight, and administrative abilities, Couchman became president of the League in 1927. In 1932, she became the first woman to be appointed to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), a post she would hold for a decade. In this capacity, she was often on the minority side where policy was concerned; for example, her recommendation that the ABC do a report on conditions to which the Aborigines were subjected was considered too controversial. In 1934, she was a member of the Australian delegation to the League of Nations.

When the new Liberal Party was formed in December of 1944, Couchman was provided with a position of strength from which to negotiate, and she succeeded in securing structural equality for the party women. She was a member of the State Executive and State Council as well as the party's Victorian vice-president (1949–55). Sir Robert Menzies described Couchman, who at State Council raised points of order into her 80s, as "the greatest statesman of them all." She was appointed DBE (Dame of the British Empire) in 1961. Couchman died on November 18, 1982, having paved the way for other women in politics, including Margaret Guilfoyle whom she nominated for preselection for the Senate (1970).

sources:

Radi, Heather, ed. 200 Australian Women. NSW, Australia: Women's Redress Press, 1988.